Invoicing has typically been both a time-consuming and tiresome part of the sales process when it comes to running a business.

While it’s crucial for ensuring that you receive payment for your products or service, using programs such as Excel or Word to create invoices is far from efficient. Although they offer templates, the time saved by going through each and every detail is negligible.

In addition, when it’s necessary to manually check all the elements of a new invoice template, including not only updating the customer and product details but also ensuring you’ve used the right invoice number and banking information, it’s easy to make a mistake.

It also means that it’s up to you to stay organised by creating and sticking with a clear filing system on your computer. As well as keep your documents safe from hardware and software malfunctions and viruses.

Luckily, advances in technology has made it possible to move these tasks online. Invoicing software essentially eliminates the need to worry about properly-updated templates, moving your invoices to the correct folder, or whether your documents are stored securely.

As a bonus, there are features that make invoicing and managing payments a smoother, more mobile process.

Invoicing software and your business

Online invoicing software takes the tedious tasks of the process and automates them by allowing you to save details that can be quickly added to a new invoice. These include:

Customer names, contact details, and payment terms

Product descriptions, photos, prices, and units

Additional documents to be sent with each invoice

By saving this information, you avoid potential mistakes that can easily occur when typing out addresses and descriptions for each new invoice. In addition, it saves a considerable amount of time.

Once your invoice is completed, online invoicing software means it can be sent directly to your customer and you’ll be notified the moment they view your invoice. This is certainly a feature in your favour, allowing you to easily dismiss claims that the invoice was not received.

You can also provide online payment options, giving your customers the opportunity to pay your invoice instantly. Direct integrations allow this to trigger payment of the invoice, automatically marking it as ‘Paid’.

The status of each invoice is clearly marked, with the ability to filter and search through your invoice list. This means no more misplaced invoices.

Invoicing to-go with mobile apps

A major benefit of invoicing software in the cloud is that it is naturally mobile. Instead of waiting until you return home after a long day of work, still needing to register payments and record expenses, mobile apps make it easy to stay on top of these tasks throughout your day.

It’s also possible to create and send new invoices from any device. This means that while working at a market, before accepting payments from customers, invoices can be created and the payment matched directly through the SumUp card reader.

It’s also more than just invoices. Quality invoicing software also offers a range of other features that aim to help simplify your sales and make it effortless to keep track of the status of your payments from customers.

From reminder letters to credit notes, quotes to delivery notes and payment receipts, invoicing software gives you the tools to follow up, make confirmations, and stay on top of each sale from start to finish.

Registering income and expenses

Working with SumUp, it’s easy to see your income registered directly in your SumUp account. As an important (if not the most important?) part of running a business, earning money seems straightforward. But maintaining an overview of your outgoing cash flow is just as crucial to the success of a business.

It’s fair to say that ‘accounting’ is not a word that elicits feelings of joy in most small business owners or freelancers. However, it need not be a task that requires careful procrastination, building until it’s inevitable. It can instead be managed on a daily basis, from anywhere, making it less of a burden.

Comprehensive invoicing software offers an expense function, allowing the user to add an expense as it occurs, enter payments and see this in their accounts and reports.

Useful not only for tax filing, but also for determining the financial health of a company and creating budgets for the upcoming quarter, invoicing software can make a big difference to the growth of a small business.

In summary

Invoicing software makes issuing and tracking your invoices easier than ever before but it doesn’t stop there. Managing the cash flow of your business improves with the ability to also track expenses and enter payments, helping you maintain a better overview of your business finances.

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